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Best Quarter for S&P 500 in 20-Years

Submitted by O'Grady Financial Group on April 10th, 2019

4.11.19

April…can you believe it. Spring breakers are done breaking. Daylight saving time (no “s’ on saving) is in effect…hopefully year round. Easter is on us. And tax procrastinators are feeling the heat…the filing deadline is days away.

And how about those first quarter statements. Beats your year ender, right? I’m the first to say no day, week, quarter, or even year’s worth of performance will have lasting impact on your life long investing career. But when we get a nice quarter, why not a little minor celebration. Because you’re not likely to hear about it from mainstream media.

So cheers to the start of 2019. The S&P 500 Index had its best first quarter since 1998…up a touch past 13%.

I wasn’t going to let you do it, but I bet you had friends and neighbors who bailed on their investments when things were looking dark in December. But you knew there’s a difference between temporary decline and permanent loss. Meaning…no reverse Grandpa’s…no selling low.

We could dive deeper all the way back to 1950 and see that in years when the index was higher in each of the first three months of the year, as this year, the final 9-months return was higher 18 out of the 19 times. But I won’t do that.

To me, that’s like saying the average April rainfall in Florida is two inches. But that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily going to rain this April. Or as we like to say in finance, past performance is not indicative of future results.

Oh…and if your back is against the tax wall and you need to release some stress, you could file for an extension. Form 48-68…available at irs.gov. It buys you another 6-months of prep time, so you don’t make any time crunch mistakes. But remember, it doesn’t extend the deadline for settling the bill with Uncle Sam.